As a kid Mum Pham used to call me pancake face because my face was big and round like a pancake, which is fair enough. My face is nowhere near as flat or as tasty as the Vietnamese pancakes mum taught me to make recently:

1. Make the pancake mix by throwing all the ingredients listed above and stirring
2. Heat a frying pan to super hot and pre-fry the onions, pork or tofu, prawn or mushroom
3. Push the contents of the pan onto one half of the pan.
4. Pour a thin layer of the pancake mix around the whole pan face - pick up the pan and swirl it around until the mix is evenly distributed and round (no matter if there's the odd gap)
5. Cover the pan with a lid and leave for about a minute to cook the surface of the mix
6. Put some bean sprout on the half of the pancake with the pre-fried filling and cover with the lid and leave to cook for another minute.
7. Once bean sprouts are cooked (look a little grey), take off the lid and let the pancake fry until the edges start to curl and crisp.
8. Fold the pancake in half by flipping the plain side over the side with the filling and put it on a plate.
9. Repeat steps 1-8 another one or two times and start eating!

When The Phamly eats this meal there's usually someone manning the pans because the dish is best enjoyed hot off the stove. We usually eat the pancake wrapped in lettuce with mint, basil, cucumber and pickled carrot and dipped in fish sauce.

I can't be arsed typing out how to roll it etc. It all ends up mushed in your gut anyway so do what you like!

Karen Walker apparel is a little too prissy, sweet, elegant and clean-cut for some one as classless as me. Karen Walker Eyewear, on the other hand, is a whole different story. They got sass, they got spunk, they got that little hint of crazy that I love.

The moment I met her SS11 Number One in black and crystal fluro yellow online I was smitten. Though, I didn't dare add them to the cart. Style rule #1: Know yourself. Myself has an unsubtle head - it's big, round, square and in your face so sharp angles in eyewear can clash terribly. Couple that with a low sitting, nose bridge (Pham genetics) and I'd be a real dumbass if I didn't try before I buy.

image: Karen Walker Eyewear Number One in Black and Crystal Fluro Yellow

While up in Sydney for the New Balance NB574.com launch in May, I went to Incu in Sydney for "retail research" purposes. Yup, very important work business...Ahem. They didn't stock the black and yellow Karen Walkers I wanted but I tried on the shape in crazy tortoise and they sit perfectly somewhere between retro and futuristic.

If you read my "About page" you will see I have to write in 'boring speak' for work. It's rarely ever about boring events or products. In fact, I'm usually quite excited about everything, that's why it's so irksome having to tone my excitement levels down for a media release.

What I'd rather say about the Wreckers Yard tomorrow is "Yo m*thef*ckers! Come check out this badass graf art comp this Sat 25th June @ my old haunt, The Evelyn Hotel. Red Bull've flown in some of the best graffiti artists from around Australia and New Zealand and they're gonna battle it out live onstage. There will be music and paint fumes galore! Oh, and it's FREE. See you there? 7pm!" But instead I have to say:

The Red Bull Wreckers Yard 2011 – Trans Tasman Final hits Melbourne this Saturday 25th June at The Evelyn Hotel in Fitzroy. Red Bull Wreckers Yard has been taking street art culture from dark alleyways and train tracks to the people. Over a whirlwind past four weeks, the 7 finalists beat the best local graff artists in their hometown in a live painting round robin for the chance to represent their city at the Trans Tasman Final this weekend!

The 2011 finalists are Itch (Melbourne), Peque (Sydney), William (Perth), Store (Adelaide), Gimiks (Brisbane), Yelz (Wellington) and Seekayem (Auckland). Also competing as a wild card entry will be 2010 champion Sofles. The night will be hosted by Melbourne’s own MC Briggs and will feature a post-competition performance from New Zealand’s MC David Dallas!

What will go down at the Wreckers Yard? The artists will be provided with a blank canvas and cans of Ironlak paint. Each round competitors will be given a theme to paint one minute before the clock starts. Some examples of themes could include greed, lust, nature, fear or freedom. The artists will then have to spray according to the theme. The judging criteria include creativity, style and theme interpretation.

The winners from each of the seven qualifiers have already scored themselves a great prize pack including Skullcandy and G-Shock gear and a trip to Melbourne to compete in the final. This Saturday the Red Bull Wreckers Yard – Trans Tasman Final will determine Australia and New Zealand's best graff artist with the winners taking home a share of $2,500, prize packs and the opportunity to graff part of Red Bull HQ in Sydney.

The great thing about acne medication that dries out your skin, your scalp, your lips and your eyeballs is...there's no great thing about it. However, it does make you ditch the contact lenses and invest in a decent pair of glasses. Good bye grade 10 wire frame IT nerd glasses. Hellooooo thick-framed Star Project glasses.

I took off the glasses as soon as I finished my course of meds in January. Then one early 6am wake up call recently, my eyes honestly squealed at the thought of wearing contact lenses so I found my old Star Projects and fell back in love with its sleek black frame and dark brown wooden temples. Perfect timing now the sun in Melbourne has stopped playing peek-a-boo and moved onto hide-and-go-seek.

Thick black frames aren't for every face or stylin' but there's a fat range of designs by Star Project (the in-house brand by Occhio spectacular spectacle retailers) as well as other brands if you head into their stores or shop online.

One thing I do often is have hair-brained ideas that I follow through much to my Phamly's amusement. Oh well, I'd rather try than die wondering though it's an expensive way to live - e.g. the cherry red bicycle collecting spider webs in the backyard, the rollerkates collecting dust in the corner of my room or the guitar I gave to my cousin. It doesn't always end in tragedy, though.

Like when I tried a class of Zumba. I was ultra-unco and skipped practically every second move in the routines to keep up with the beat but it was SO much fun! It turned out to be another failed hair-brained idea seeing as how I've only attended that one class in two months.

The happy ending is I had every intention to keep it up so I went and found appropriate footwear for a gym classroom. As always, I try to talk myself into buying something sensible and to blend in with the normal people but, no, of course as soon as I set foot in the New Balance outlet store on Smith Street in Collingwood I made a bee-line for the brightest pair of runners in the store. Hello, New Balance Disco Runners! Look how amazing they are!

image: what the finished product should look like from foodforfour.com(because i can't be arsed making fish sauce and taking a picture)

Hello world, there's a lot of advertising around for breath mints and chewing gums and tooth and mouth cleaning products but what about the promotion of bad breath? I'm going to do my part to help balance out the universe by sharing Mum Pham's Fish Sauce Mix recipe.

Fishy version

1 cup fish sauce

1 cup sugar

2 cups boiled water (dissolve the sugar in the boiled water)

1/4 white vinegar

1/4 lemon juice

2-3 cloves of garlic, crushed/finely diced

Finely diced fresh chilli optional!

Faux-fish version (fancy-speak for vegetarian)

1 tablespoon salt

1 cup sugar

2 cups boiled water (dissolve the sugar in the boiled water)

1/4 white vinegar

1/4 lemon juice

2-3 cloves of garlic, crushed/finely diced

1 drop of yellow colouring

Finely diced fresh chilli optional!

Mix it all together and it's best left overnight or for at least a few hours before serving so the garlic has time to work its magic on the mix. Enjoy!

Sadly, my rainbow swirl Speedos are dead. The elastic had rotten in my one year hiatus from the pool so last weekend I took a stroll down to Swimwear Galore on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy to find a fresh swimsuit. On the walk there I repeatedly told myself to buy a sensible black or navy swimsuit so I'd at least blend in with the fit people who swim laps around me.

Who was I kidding? As soon as I got in the store I skipped passed the 50 black, blue and purple swimsuits and went straight for the bright and bold patterns of Funkita. So what if no one at the pool will take me seriously in this swimsuit. It's not like I'd have any more credibility in a standard black Speedo seeing as how the only people slower than me are the kids who can't swim and the little old ladies who breaststroke without getting their perms wet.

The girl in the store also told me how I can prevent my swimmers from gross-rot in future. Good ol' Bayswim Tog Wash! It gets rid of the chlorine smell so I assume it gets rid of the chlorine too. If it doesn't elongate my Funkita's life, I guess I'll just have to buy a new suit next year!

Some of you may not know this but I am a stationery nut, you may even say nazi. The only time the happy rainbow land that is the Shiny Entertainment office came close to conflict was when a colleague emptied my pencil sharpener - my word, nostrils were flared that day!

I am never far away from a Smencil. Other pens and pencils come and go but I have been through 5 sets of Smencil pencils - there's 10 different smells in a grey lead set. To be honest, I've given most of that 50 away on my mission to share yummy pencils with the world. Now I'm sharing them with you!

The delicious, almost edible, though not lickable (I tried) smells that waft up as you use this pencil made from old newspapers wrapped around lead then soaked in 'gourmet liquid scents' is absolutely divine. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go sniff a Smencil.

eBay is a dangerous playing field. There's the bidding, there's the tension, then if you win there's a brief adrenaline rush but then the wait for delivery brings thoughts like, 'Will it fit? Will it match the description/photo? Will the fabric be nice?' race through your head. If the answer's 'no' to any of these questions the feeling is a total bummer. If the answer's yes, yes, yes! then you're hooked and go back for more.

image: Zara Leopard Print Skirt on model

I, Jade Pham, am an eBay addict. I spend hours and hours trawling through searches for spunky items I never seem to find in stores. I thought I'd save you the hours and direct link to this Zara Leopard Print skirt I found at Mary Jane Closet. The skirt was so badass when it arrived I went back to Mary Jane and bought the dress as well.

image: Zara Leopard Print Skirt on model

It makes me a little sad that Zara will now be mainstream in Australia because it will inevitably become generic and boring on the masses. Still, I'm going to have a look when it opens in Melbourne to see if I can find statement pieces or nice basics that I can mix and match and mash-up!

Being with Vodafone was like dating a sweet fool. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't get anything right. Dating some one just because you feel sorry for them isn't a stable building block for a good relationship so it had to end.

Being with Android was like being with a brilliant rebel. A cute, fun and free spirit. Anything I wanted I could have. Anything I thought of, he'd already thought of and did better than I imagined. Oh, Android, how we had some amazing times. But Android shared his love around with so many other handsets (Samsungs, Sonys, LGs...) that he wasn't always aware of my needs. His lag in response made me feel unloved.

So I strayed. I needed some one who would love my handset and only my handset so that everything he designed on his operating system would be complemented by my hardware. That's when I finally gave Apple's iPhone the time of day. He'd been pursuing me for years but I always thought he was arrogant (Mr. I Am Your Future) and way too pretty for my tastes.

We've been seeing each other for about a week now. I find his affection a little restrictive - I can't have the notification tones I want without going behind his back and I don't want to be a cheater (hack into the phone's backend), I can't be as close friends with my bestie Google Apps as I once was (beloved Gmail functions in particular) and he doesn't care to let me know when friends have left a message (no LED indicator) so I have to poke him every now and then and ask politely. But so far he's proven loyal and makes me feel safe.

Also, his good friend Telstra has been a dream to get to know. He's always there when I call or text or email. Very attentive and reliable. I do miss the free spirit of Android so maybe one day, when I'm bored of Apple, we can have another fling.

Believe it or not, Asian babies are born with blue bums. I didn't realise this was uncommon knowledge until I compared birthmarks and other genetic anomalies with seven caucasian freaks (hello no ear lobes, hello hammer toes). Great dinner conversation. My birthmark is a Mongolian Blue Spot that never faded. It's a blue-grey spot on my bum about the size of a 20 cent piece in the shape of a triangle. There is no way to take a classy photo of my butt so I won't.

This is a photo of a 6 month old Taiwanese girl who is suffering the indignity of having her little bum plastered on Wikipedia. While the Mongolian Blue Spot is meant to fade completely within a few years, a little stayed behind at the top of my right buttock.

I'm not entirely sure why the blue bum syndrome was named after Mongolians when it is found on East Asians, Native Amercians, Polynesians and East Africans. The German physician, Erwin Balz, who named the condition was looking after the Imperial family in Japan - perhaps he thought all Japanese looked Mongolian. Unlike Aussies who think all Asians look Japanese.

I'm normally a horse before cart kind of person, but as my current mobile contract nears its end and my internal debate about leaving Android for iPhone gets more and more heated (the Apple in me insulted the Android in me the other day - how rude!), I've decided to solve the problem the only way I know how, by shopping! Having trawled eBay for iPhone 4 cases all weekend, I have finally found a 'very me' case.

For some reason, even though I chomp down burgers and steaks and chicken breasts and wings like there's no tomorrow, I don't wear leather. Perhaps it's not flammable enough for my highly synthetic tastes. I do own one leather item though, and I justify it because it was for a good cause.

Corter Leather is a one-man operation run by Eric Heins in his tiny bedroom studio in Boston, Massachusetts. When the terrible Earthquakes hit Japan, Heins released a custom bracelet with a hand-painted red button symbolising the sun in the Japanese flag, and donated all proceeds to Japan. Talk about a labour of love.

The Japan bracelets are no longer on sale (man's gotta pay rent, you know) but Heins takes custom orders so if you prefer a red button send him a request! Seeing as how he runs everything himself, give him a few days to reply to emails. Gotta respect a man who's good with his hands.

The universe has a round-a-bout way of working. The owner of the awesomest Aussie-based Dirty Rich online fashion store forwarded an email about a new position at Diamond Dozen to a lovely lady at Taboo who then forwarded the email to another delight at Spook Magazine who then forwarded the email to me when I was looking for work.

image: Dirty Rich Online Store

Dirty Rich unwittingly helped me land the dream job that also enables me the funds and the excuse ("I work in fashion") to purchase this badass Joyrich Jungle Cat 3/4 Jogger from their store. Seriously, check the site out; Dirty Rich brings some uber hot underground and boutique American street brands to Australia, for which, my deeply suppressed tracky-dack craving is grateful. The comfort of tracksuit pants but oh so fab looking.

image: Joy Rich Jungle Cat 3/4 Jogger on model

Disclaimer: Jade Pham wears 3/4 Joggers for fashion purposes. Jade Pham does not jog. She is a slob posing as a fit jogger.